> He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time, and if he passes he would be promoted

> He did manage to arrange with them that they would pay for him to take a 1-year old masters in CS in his own spare time, and if he passes he would be promoted - and he was. Well, at least he scored a degree out of it. I'm torn on this. I'm not sure I see it all that different than if they wanted to make sure someone they were moving into a managerial role had knowledge to back it up, and wanted them to take managerial courses. It's good that the company paid for the courses, a bit less good that it was in personal time (but it's also theoretically beneficial for the person and isn't tied to the company, so I don't fault that much). If they outright offer this path in in this situation and it doesn't have to be brought up by the employee, I think that's a pretty acceptable solution to requiring that degree for the position, if the company thinks it's really important to have for some reason.